Ukraine crash investigators held back by fighting

Safety concerns and hindrance from the separatists who control the area have kept the investigation team away.

The EU joins the U.S. with a tougher set of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine. Could they kick off a new round of escalation in the most bitter confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War? David Pollard reports.

Dmitry Lovetsky
/ AP

Crash investigators from the Netherlands have been unsuccessful in trying to reach the MH17 site for four days.

KYIV, UKRAINE—An international team of investigators abandoned efforts to reach the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine for a fourth day Wednesday because of heavy fighting, and a Ukrainian official said approaches to the area have been mined.

Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko predicted that sometime “soon,” the Ukrainian army would oust the pro-Russian separatist rebels who currently control the fields and towns where the debris is scattered. But even then, he said, investigators will not be able to visit the site until the mines, which he said have been laid by rebels, can be cleared.

Nearly two weeks after the airliner was shot down by a missile apparently fired from separatist territory, a sense of urgency to get a team of forensics experts to the wreckage, where human remains and plane parts are unguarded, keeps butting up against the dangers of a war zone.

The Boeing 777 was carrying 298 passengers and crew en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. More than 200 sets of remains have been transferred to the Netherlands for processing and identification, but dozens of others are believed to be unaccounted for.

Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman told reporters Tuesday in Kiev that “a clear plan has been developed which will allow us to carry out another powerful attempt to enter this area to conduct all activities.”

Groysman stopped short of saying the Ukrainian military was about to overrun the rebels who control the territory around the crash site, but he said he hoped that “in the next few hours, in the next 24 hours, there will be positive news in the fulfillment of this task.”

The latest impasse in the crash investigation developed a day after President Barack Obama announced new sanctions against Russia and called on President Vladimir Putin to stop supporting the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, pull his troops back from the Ukrainian border and promote a negotiated settlement between the separatists and the Western-backed Ukraine government.

In eastern Ukraine, a team of about 50 experts and investigators from the Netherlands and Australia remained in Donetsk as shelling in the city struck an apartment building near their hotel Tuesday.

Last week, monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said access to the site was quite good.

But this week, the Ukrainian military is in the midst of a major offensive against the rebels, and some of the fiercest fighting has been in the general area where the plane came down in pieces on July 17.

The wreckage and what officials suspect are the remains of dozens of passengers and crew are about 65 km from Donetsk.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday protested the fighting near the crash site, saying that the Ukrainian government was trying to impede the inquiry into the attack.

Ukrainian officials insist that government troops are observing a no-fire zone in a 25-mile perimeter around the crash site.

“The point is that this area is in the control of terrorists,” Lysenko told reporters at a briefing Tuesday. “We can’t guarantee the safety of the experts.”

The United Nations estimates that more than 1,100 people have been killed since fighting began in April.

In Donetsk, heavy fighting continued during the day Tuesday, including in the city centre, which is a rebel stronghold where Kyiv forces in recent days have been making incursions.

Three people were killed and 15 people were injured in fighting since late Monday night, the city said.